The Archivist's Gift
by dancingkatz
Summary: Fourth Age. One of Minas Tirith's Archivists commemorates the first year of Elessar's reign. Part of the Archivist series. Faramir & OFC. No romance.
1. Chapter 1 Cockles

Cockles

"What are you doing?"

Tenerië ignored Faramir as she frowned at the table. A piece of parchment lay across it but instead of the usual creamy off-white, most of this particular piece was black. Flicking it with her finger, she shook her head. "No, this one is not going to work."

"What's not going to work?"

This time Tenerië turned her head and glared at the Steward. "Don't you have more important things to do than to come down here and bother me?"

"Not at the moment." Faramir's voice was mild as he answered. "What is this?"

"I had an idea, and so far each attempt has been a disaster and a waste of goat hide." She turned her glare on the offending experiment. "Silver on black would make a stunning codex of the record of the first year of King Elessar's rule, but I haven't figured out how to get the parchment to color evenly or without cockling."

"Wouldn't the silver tarnish to black? It would eventually become unreadable." Faramir ran his hand across the rippled surface of the parchment, his expression one of consideration. "In any case, are you coloring the parchment after it was completed?"

"Of course. As for the silver ink. I have a few ideas that ought to take care of the tarnishing issue. But it's a moot point if I can't produce enough properly smooth parchment for the pages of the book."

"What if the skin was dyed black before being stretched and dried? Wouldn't that take care of the cockling and uneven color?"

Tenerië's jaw dropped and she muttered something impolite before turning and stomping towards the door, where she paused and looked back at Faramir. "Well, are you coming? I'll need help getting one of Master Elmar's stretching racks down here."

She grinned. "You said that you had nothing better to do at the moment. And it is your idea after all."


	2. Chapter 2 Bargain

Bargain

"Do you think it's possible, Master Gimli?"

The Lord of the Glittering Caves, recently returned to Minas Tirith for the New Year's celebration, and waylaid shortly thereafter by the senior archivist, looked intrigued. "It's not something that I remember ever being asked for, Mistress Tenerië, but I think it could be done."

"Do you think that essence of gum dissolved in purified water would work as a binder? That's what I use when making gold ink."

"How finely do you grind the gold? And how much do you need to be able to write an entire book? I must say that my own people save such precious metals for jewelry or decorating weapons and stick with plain black ink for our tomes."

The dwarf waited while Tenerië retrieved a small codex from a locked cabinet, and placed it on the table before him. "This has thirty folios and it took a piece of gold the size of my baby niece's littlest fingernail to make the ink," she explained. "The particles must be ground fine enough not to clog the pen but roughly enough to provide several highly reflective surfaces. The Record will be at least three times as many folios and twice as large."

Gimli glanced at Tenerië for permission and began to turn the pages of the book. The brilliance of gold on ultramarine blue parchment was jewel-like in effect and he found himself entranced by the miniscule figures, all in gold, that populated the borders of the pages. Carefully closing the cover when he'd finally examined each and every page, he turned towards the waiting woman and smiled. "I'll see that you get what you need within a sevenday of my return home. Your Record will be something that even the greatest of my own people's craftsmen will envy." He laughed as he handed her the codex. "Besides, everyone knows if you want anything done with mithril, you should ask a dwarf."

"But we have not yet spoken of remuneration for your labours, Master Gimli. Surely, you aren't going to provide me with what I need for free!" Tenerië held the small book to her chest and kept her eyes fixed on the King's Friend as she spoke. "I have only a certain budget for the project, so shall we retire to the Laughing Goat and discuss your fee over a tankard of ale?"

Gimli laughed and slapped the haft of his axe. "If you weren't so tall and beardless, I'd swear you were one of my kin, Mistress. That sounds a proper way to conclude our business. But I must warn you that I'm a hard bargainer!"

After taking enough time to put the blue codex back in its cabinet, the two left the archive, Tenerië answering, "Thank you for the compliment, but I deem that you'll find I drive a hard bargain as well."


	3. Chapter 3 Gift & a Compliment

Gifts

The silver-coloured particles in the marble casket glimmered in the lamplight as Tenerië carefully strained the contents of a small pewter pot into a porcelain bowl. A messenger from the Citadel had arrived just before luncheon with a package and letter, both sealed with the mark of Gimli Gloin's son. It was only at the insistence of her superior, Master Archivist Remedur, that she'd locked both as yet unopened away in her office and accompanied him to the Laughing Goat for a meal. It was more than an hour and a half later that she was finally able to return to her workshop cum office and look at what the Lord of the Glittering Caves had sent.

The marble coffer was a work of art in itself, the top and sides carved with geometric designs in low relief, but when she'd unlocked it with the small key that had been enclosed with the letter, she felt faint. She had hoped to get perhaps 20 grains worth of the precious metal and here was more than five hundred times—no, possibly even a thousand times more than that!

She'd read over the accompanying letter and the statement that their bargain was sealed and Gimli would expect to receive a codex on red dyed parchment and copied out in mithril ink recording the acts of the Fellowship during the War Against Sauron within a year's time.

His final paragraph had read:

_I am no fool, Mistress Tenerië, and know that I have sent you far more mithril than needed for the two books. Consider the remainder a gift. It is rare to find the soul of a dwarf in one of another race, but your work—and your bargaining!—marked you as such in my eyes. Continue to create beauty in your chosen craft and know that you are always welcome in my halls._

She smiled as she measured out the necessary amount of metal and dropped it into the newly made binder, the memory of her and Gimli's discussion about esthetics even brighter than his gift.


	4. Chapter 4 Binding

Binding

At last the final folio was complete, the silvery letters glimmering against the smooth black parchment like stars in the night sky. The signatures carefully stitched with black linen thread that had been spun by the Queen herself when she heard whisper of the project. Tenerië herself was no seamstress when it came to clothing but the kettle stitches she used to join the gathering of folios were as finely wrought and even as any of the fine embroideries the ladies of the Citadel could produce. The only tasks that remained were binding the gathered signatures between the cover boards and finishing off the external decoration and bosses.

It had been a long time since Tenerië had made a book entirely by her own hands. Usually, once an archivist specialising in creating the codices that held the records of the kingdom received their mastery, they tended to concentrate on only one aspect or another of the process. She usually just did calligraphy and illumination, just as Master Elmar made the fine parchment and papers, and Master Remedur, when he could get free of his administrative duties created the carved cover boards that enclosed the richest and most valuable of the archives contents. But this particular project was something she felt driven to do entirely by herself. She'd even turned down Lord Faramir's offer of assistance, save for the time she'd bullied him into helping her move a stretcher rack from Master Elmar's workroom to hers.  
As she reached for the two smooth panels of lebrethon, which she'd decided to use for cover boards after finding them already cut and drilled in the vault during the final fit of restoring the archive's contents to their original locations once the war was over, it occurred to her that she hadn't poured so much of herself into a single work in all the years she'd been pursuing her vocation. Not even her masterwork, an illuminated history of the Stewardship, had consumed her mind and imagination as much.

Perhaps it was because they were beginning a new Age. Gondor was a renewed Kingdom, and her King Returned seemed intent on making this new beginning a blessed and successful one. Perhaps with this work she was binding herself to the Elessar's rule and vision just as surely as the black and mithril pages were being bound into the Record of the first year of his reign.


	5. Chapter 5 Presentation

Presentation

Aragorn gazed at the book in his hands in wonder and delight. Of all the gifts he'd been presented with on the second anniversary of his ascension to the Throne of the Reunited Kingdoms, this was probably the most impressive. The white leather binding bore three instances of his device of crown, stars and tree on the front, back and spine, each embossed in black with silver—no, mithril—details.

"I am amazed, my good Masters and Mistresses, at the beauty of your gift. I have never seen the like, even in the library of my Queen's father. It shall always remain a treasure of my house."

Master Remedur, the Chief Archivist and most senior of the delegation that had accompanied Tenerië to the Citadel, spoke. "Your Majesty should reserve your thanks for Senior Archivist Mistress Tenerië, as the volume is entirely her work."

Aragorn raised his eyes from the striking sight of the silver letters that seemed to float on the black parchment to smile at the blushing woman who looked as though it was only the close proximity of her fellow archivists that kept her from fleeing the reception room where the anniversary presentations were being made. "Then I thank you, Mistress, for your talent and generosity. Surely this must have taken you many, many days of work to make."

"It took her almost a year and a half, your Majesty," Faramir interjected. "Time well spent, I would say and the results are even more beautiful than I even imagined when she mentioned the idea of silver text on black parchment to me."

"You knew about this?" Aragorn glanced at his Steward in surprise.

"Yes, your majesty. I stopped by to visit my former teacher one day to find her experimenting with black dye and parchment and ended up moving a rather heavy drying frame up a flight of stairs to her workroom as a result. But I had not seen the book." Faramir smiled towards Tenerië and turned back to the King. "Your majesty must remind me to tell you about the treasures the Archives contain. Like their keepers they have hidden depths one wouldn't expect from looking at them."


End file.
